A notary bill was filed again this year. This bill would require all notaries to maintain a bound journal of all official acts, including notarizing most of the standard documents involved in a real estate transaction. It requires that you keep track of the signors name, their residence address, whether identification was produced, and if identification was produced you are required to document the last 4 digits of their identification and document the expiration date. Now I don’t know whether this is going to prevent fraud but it’s certainly going to create a significant burden on all notaries.

Additionally, there has been a bill filed regarding estoppel certificates from Homeowner and Condominium Associations. This bill creates a 10 day deadline after written request for the association to deliver an estoppel certificate. There are penalties if they don’t comply with this timeline and in most cases, it is proposed that there be a $100 limit on the amount that the association can charge for providing the estoppel certificate. As you might suspect, this bill has received a lot of attention from the association industry.

We will certainly monitor these bills and update you if any of these bills become law.